


The Anderson Conundrum (or The Curious Case of the Forgotten Kiss)

by Emma_Lynch



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Conspiracy Theories, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, F/M, Hypnosis, Sherlolly - Freeform, Tumblr Prompt, prepare to feel sorry for Anderson, sherlolly kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-03 07:37:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10962678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emma_Lynch/pseuds/Emma_Lynch
Summary: From a Tumblr prompt by it-is-never-twins-watson: "Maybe Anderson did see the Sherlolly kiss and when they realised they got Derren Brown to hypnotise him to forget everything he saw. But he wasn't completely relinquished of his memories and he has little pieces that he thinks are just ideas. It's what motivates him to petition that Sherlock is alive."So, here it is and I hope you like it!Special thank yous to rooneykmara, likingthistoomuch and mychakk over on Tumblr for encouraging me, and of course, it-is-never-twins-watson for the prompt!





	1. Thank you for your imput

Eyes wide open and staring at a ceiling crack that appears a little longer each day, Philip Anderson reaches out a hand to quell an alarm he has no need for, mere seconds before the tinny _beep-beep-beep_ stabs savagely through the silence of his little room.

Old springs creak and wheeze as he eases pale, spindly limbs from twisted sheets and blankets and shuffles over to the sink to turns on taps which provoke noises from the boiler that would send shivers down the spine of any respected heating engineer. His beard prickles his hands; rough and dishevelled is his aesthetic now it would seem. The beard is wiry, ginger, ugly - he likes it because he knows he deserves it. Tired eyes, rheumy and sagging around the edges, stare back through a mottled mirror. Hair flops half-hearted over a brow bearing more furrows than a man barely into his forties deserves; a man in the prime of his life. Philip laughs at his reflection. He laughs at the _prime_ that is his life, because he can't imagine how things could improve from hereon in. Sally would have said he had no imagination had she been around. But she wasn't, along with everyone else.

His old Nokia lay, virtually out of charge on the bench (where was that bloody charger?) but there was, miraculously a blinking light - a message. an acknowledgement, words from the void beyond the yellow front door of his shockingly grubby King's Cross flat.

_Good news: hearing brought forward to Thursday. Get it out of the way before the weekend. Keep your spirits up mate. GL_

Ah, Greg. His ex-boss had been nothing but fair since… _that time_ , and was the only connection he still had with the Yard, beyond official emails and letters from the legal department. _Get it out of the way before the weekend_...He cocks a wry smile at that. Sure, wasn't his weekend just full of evenings out with friends at _The Blue Goose_ and picnics in the park? It wouldn't do to let the inquiry into the suicide of a man he hated get in the way of all that quality time at the latest Hockney exhibition at the Tate Modern, or brunch at the Roof Garden at _La Gavroche_. He and Sally had liked the Comedy Club on Pink Lane on a Thursday night: a couple of rum and cokes each and a shared bowls of nachos. It wasn't trendy Thai street food in Houndsditch, but it had been good… _really_ good.

Philip Anderson throws his phone across a cluttered kitchen bench and hunts for his keys. He wants to leave the faded primrose walls and greasy linoleum, he wants to jump into the bustle of London and be swallowed up, anonymous, private, hidden from prying eyes, and become part of something larger than himself. He wants to do something, something helpful, something useful and impressive. He wants a pat on the back, a recognition, a cool, sardonic assured voice that bleeds into his every waking hour and says:

" _Good! Yes, good. Excellent observation Anderson."_

But he never will now, will he?

**~x~**

_Of course it's for men: I'm wearing it._

_Here we are again._

Flashing lights, blues and twos, radios crackling, paper suit, air of own importance, smug smile in remembrance of last night.

Assurance dashed, sent away somewhere to curl up and die.

_Thank you for your imput._

_Face the other way._

Cold, set, porcelain pale; wide set, incredible eyes - alien. He was alien. A moue of distaste, disgust. No, worse - disinterest. Confidence and assurance stripped away, melting into the darkness of the night, alongside barely suppressed smirks of colleagues whose loyalty was just as intangible.

_Here we are again._

_Don't talk out loud._

_Don't talk._

_Don't._

A long coat, turning on its heel after delivering so many death blows. See it, solve it, sweep away and take my pride and dignity. Be right. About everything, even about me. See inside of me, defining and then dissecting my pointless existence without a smile or second glance. On to the next

_Don't talk out loud._

_You lower the IQ of the whole street._

And the next

_You're putting me off._

And the next

_Do_

_Your_

_Research._

Philip Anderson opens his eyes into another bleak and hollow morning, realising that the person who said some guff about time being a great healer was certainly no doctor. Eighteen months on and his life was little more than a spreading damp patch on a skirting board, Chelsea was still at the top of the Premiership, the congestion charge was still in existence and Sherlock Holmes was still dead. Everyday blurred into the next since his contract had no leeway for obsessive losers whose grasp on reality was too tenuous to be any good at forensic science. He'd stopped opening letters from his estranged wife's solicitor in July so couldn't say for certain whether he was divorced or not, but at the same time doubted whether the sporadic banging on the door of his seedy little hovel originated from queues of amorous ladies, clamouring for his attention.

_Routine: Bedsprings, sink, water, bleary eyes, bristly beard, same clothes as yesterday, Blackpool breakfast, leave the flat, look for fulfilment, fail to find it, return, eat yesterday's remains, bed. Repeat to fade._

But, maybe not today.

Philip Anderson pauses as he looks into the mirror and catches sight of his own bright blue eyes, capturing something that he thought was lost: _rebellion._

"No," he says to the mirror. "No. Not today. This has to stop. I am stopping it." He pauses, almost breathless with his decision, not yet knowing the method to intercept the madness.

" _Brilliant,"_ comes a voice he knows so well; deep, sneering, lingering around every darkened corner of his consciousness, all of the time.

"Yes?" Hope sparks. "Do you really think so?"

" _Brilliant impression of an idiot,"_ returns the voice, but Philip smiles anyway, taking it as encouragement, in fact.

"It's ok," returns he, reaching for a toothbrush, pushing lank hair out of brighter, bluer eyes. "I've stuff to do today: research. I've been told it's the way forward."

And that's how it all started.

 


	2. Broken Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anderson has the bit between his teeth, but not everyone loves conspiracy theories.

He walks slowly back from the pub, folding and unfolding the conversation, the facts of the matter, over and over in his head.

Tibet. India. Germany.

He's getting closer isn't he? Each time the cases were closer to London. Each one solved by an anonymous crime-fighting genius who passed their credit to the authorities. Just like it had been here, before he'd gone.

"What bollocks!" Lestrade hadn't wanted to admit that. Pride, or some such notion which was preventing him from seeing the actual truth of the matter.

_Tashi dalek. Inspector Prakesh. Herr Trapoff._

Crimes so unrelated but for their logical entrapment of the guilty party by parties unknown. Anderson smiled as he passed the corner of Blandford Street. Greg had very little in the way of ego, but his professional dignity had also taken a knock recently and he was obviously in no mood to take further disparagement. He was so sure of the strength of his convictions, but his previous commanding officer was clearly blinkered and seemed to be ...concerned for him.

"You shouldn't be thinking like this, Philip. It's… it's unhealthy is what it is."

Anderson had actually spluttered out an incredulous huff, half laughter, half shock. How could a man of the law - a detective himself - not see things how they were. Everything was linked: times, dates, places, descriptions of eyewitnesses, court transcripts. He had been very thorough. He had done his research. Admittedly, he hadn't been eating much, and sleep had been… a touch disturbed from time to time, but it had been for a good reason, a purpose. It had given him a reason to get up in the morning and face another endlessly pointless day.

He carried on, sightless and lost in thought, crossing Dorset street with the Tesco Express on the left.

"Unhealthy? It's faultless detective work! Anyone ( _someone)_ would be proud of it and see validity in these findings."

"Happenstance. Circumstantial."

"No, no!" He'd put down his pint rather forcefully, wanting a proper hearing from his only remaining friend; a hearing he hadn't received at the actual hearing (Suicide of Fake Genius).

"Greg, he can't stop himself from solving these crimes, and he wants us to know it's him."

Eyes stare at him, but they are not hostile. They actually exude a kind of… pity.

"Philip…"

"No! It's him. It has to be him!"

A hand on his shoulder, but even the comfort of actual physical contact from another human being does not distract his indignance.

"Look at the map, Greg-"

"You just look so tired."

His pace slowed slightly, replaying the scene as he passed Nandos on the left, crossing Bickenhall Street.

Sure he was tired; sleeping badly had become embedded into his hard drive over the past two years, since guilt appeared to be an admirable adversary for the Sandman. A sudden crash from across the road startles him. A young lad with a bucket of bottles, emptying them into the recycling outside of a bar shocks his heart into a jumping, staccato rhythm and his brain into a random slice of deja vu.

_Breaking glass. Broken dream._

Shattering, splintering shards of glass. The image of them was instantly so clear, causing him to stop suddenly just before the junction with Melcombe Street, the tube station on the right. A patina of light explodes across glittering pieces, dropping in slow motion all around him like he was within the memory itself; an inception of a dream within a dream.

Then they were gone and a taxi honks its horn at him as he finds he's about to cross a busy road without clear sight of the reality all around.

Jesus. That dream had been playing on repeat for so many nights, he felt as if it too had become embedded deep within his subconscious, awaiting an awakening. Philip Anderson shook himself, striding with purpose. He approached the familiar front door within minutes and slowed as the familiar black gloss and brass adornments came into his eyeline. Speedy's was locked up, shutters down and 221B's windows were darkened and sightless, closed down and empty.

"Do you honestly believe if you have enough stupid theories, it's going to change what really happened?" Greg had drained his glass and was reaching for his coat, compassion given way to irritation and frustration (his lunchtimes were less flexible in his new post).

So, Philip stands there, in front of the empty house and stares up at its defiant vacancy.

"It's just a trick," he whispers into the cooling air of the late afternoon. "It's just a magic trick."

**~x~**

"Sarah isn't coming."

Molly Hooper looks up from her phone in shock, straight into a deep-set pair of bright blue eyes glaring down at her intently. A dim familiarity blossoming into dread is the only thing that prevents her standing up and pushing away from him.

"A-Anderson?" He's wide-eyed and dishevelled looking, fawn,knitted jumper pilled and grubby, and a faint aroma of disinfectant hanging about him, conjuring memories of a thousand uncared for shared hallways.

"She isn't coming," he repeats and Molly is suddenly glad to be in a public place, and allows her natural disposition to do the talking.

"Hello there. I remember you from the hearing. I didn't know you knew my friend Sarah, but she _is_ coming since she only texted me to meet here for lunch about an hour ago."

"No." He is nervous but quite comfortable and strangely assured. _"I_ texted you. I hacked her phone."

He suddenly breaks into an oddly incongruous smile that doesn't appear to reach his eyes. Molly Hooper is not easily frightened and she possesses an unusually finely-honed intuition where emotional turmoil is concerned. One might say she is skilled at deducing what might lie beneath the layers of a heart.

"You look tired," she smiles right back, unphased and friendly, "why don't you sit down and tell me how I can help you. You could have just called me directly you know."

If he is surprised, he doesn't show it, sitting down suddenly, clumsily scraping the chair across the cafe's tiled floor and leaning in, exuding secrecy and _Domestos._

"I'm really not insane you know."

"OK. But that's probably something an insane person would say."

"No. I've been very thorough, done my research. I've spoken to people, but everyone's either in on it or ignorant of the facts."

Molly waves over the waitress and a steaming mug of coffee is placed before Philip Anderson before she speaks to him again. He clasps it like a drowning man and Molly is kind.

"I know what you think, Philip. People… people have mentioned your _ideas_ to me. You have to stop torturing yourself…"

"He isn't dead."

Her eyes flash wide and he sees a flicker, the tiniest flicker. Those hours scrolling through _The Science of Deduction_ website had provided quite the insight into how to spot a liar. He smiles.

"You know he isn't dead."

The dimple on her left cheek holds the smile, but her eyes do not. He feels triumphant. Greg knew nothing, but there was _something_ about Molly Hooper…

_(Glass shattering, crunching underfoot. A black brogue, stepping onto it and grinding the shards into splinters, into powder)_

She is standing, finding her jacket on the chair, shrugging it on.

"You really shouldn't hack into people's phones."

"Sherlock did it all the time."

She falters for a second, then gathers up her bag and gloves.

"Yes. Yes he did. And now, look what happened to him. You should go home and get some sleep…"

Standing, she is silhouetted against the multi-paned glass window, face set in shadow, still echoing concern for him... but something else, something nervous and uncertain.

And as Molly Hooper leaves, letting the door's bell tingle as she closes it firmly, he is sure he has seen that shadowed outline before ( _white coat, pony-tail, glass all around_ ) and he knows she is lying.

**~x~**


	3. Window of Opportunity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Investigating, breaking and entering, using his powers of deduction... is Anderson becoming a real detective after all?

If Lestrade had been furious about that coded alphabet case he'd set up in the British Museum's stock room to lure out Sherlock, he was surely going to be incandescent with rage when he found his ex-forensic lead breaking into a hospital mortuary in the _-ahem-_ dead of night. But, Philip was now in the grip of such certainty that Sherlock Holmes was not only still living, but actually travelling back through the highways and byways of Europe in order to resume his consultancy, that a thousand restraining orders and doctor's notes would not have kept him away. Sherlock's Homeless Network had been useless. Clamped shut like oysters, even open access to his (admittedly limited) funds not urging them out of their silence. Mycroft Holmes (should he have dared to attempt access) had the manpower to have him physically removed from his austere presence, thus Anderson felt his only recourse was to return to a place that held a strange familiarity (splintered woodwork, glass panelled windows, an oddly familiar silhouette) that had haunted both his conscious and unconscious these past weeks.

The lab is silent, bar the steady dripping of a tap in the far end. Small fluorescent tubes highlight empty benches and brushed steel clipboards populate scrubbed tiled walls. Haunting the website and hospital's intranet had given him what he hoped was a window of opportunity when the room he needed was at its quietest, and he was going to make every second count. Home Office issue torches were pretty powerful, and he still had his (along with a few more momentos of another life) therefore a small but intensely powerful beam picked out elements of the lab, shining his focus and avid, desperate curiosity across every detail.

Drying cabinets rise high behind empty trolleys stacked atop each other, declaring a kind of disappointed disgust in the lowering of the current death rate. The beam travels carefully below the Pico disinfector and the expensive chromotography columns that must have taken a fair chunk of Mike Stamford's budget that year. Anderson knows his way pretty well around the lab equipment, but it's the lab's largest window that truly interests him and he can surely feel the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears as he nears it. So familiar, as though he saw it everyday, yet strangely unfamiliar, since his last visit in this room had been well over two years ago. Holding the tiny torch between his teeth, Philip runs a gloved hand up and down the architrave of the window, feeling the putty and the glass, the woodwork and the carpentry.

A window of opportunity.

"So new, so fresh," murmurs an inspired forensic investigator, surely a man to be admired by those of a similar bent.

_("Brilliant! Well done Anderson! Excellent deduction.")_

A man with a voice still haunting the inside of his head.

Last night's dream had been particularly … _disturbing,_ and his face burned to merely recollect it.

_Glass smashing, shards flying into space, glittering about the form of something (someone) crashing through its centre, imploding from the inside out. Feet crunching down as it/he lands, dark and silhouetted against a window (this window? It was this window!), light pouring around a shock of dark hair. The thumping beat of his heart as he recalls dimpled cheeks, parted lips, wet and wanting._

_Good God._ Philip Anderson steadies himself against the wall, his hands grasping the window sill, noting the smoothness and newness of its wood, the clean caste to its putty, even the smell of pine and new paint still lingering about its carcass. He sags, fighting a mixture of confusion, justification and erotically charged memory which all jostle for space in his beleaguered brain.

 _Why am I seeing this? What's happened here? Why are these random, blurring, dream-like images on an endless loop in my brain, haunting me? Torturing me._ Hands fall limp, weakened to his side, torch falling from loose fingers and clacking noisily across tiled floor.

"Shit!"

All adrenalin and action, he is on his stomach, reaching under units to retrieve it while it frustratingly rolls a little further back, just brushed by his trembling fingers.

"Shit!"

Hissing through clenched teeth as a sudden, sharp pain stabs through his index finger, causing swift withdrawal, elbows banging on stainless steel and heart pounding and making him breathless. Philip staggers across to a sink beneath a buzzing fluorescent tube, flickering slightly in its blueness. Scarlet blood oozes from a small cut and he runs a little water, pulling a grubby handkerchief from his pocket to stop incriminating blood spots littering the scene. He could hear Sally's voice in his head as he wound it around tightly _("the only man I know under seventy who carries a cloth hankie!")_ and wonders what cut him.

The powerful beam heralds the exact location of the torch as he (tentatively) reaches for it once more, this time grasping the handle and sweeping it beneath the bench, searching. And there it was.

A tiny shard of glass, lying forgotten in an otherwise pristine laboratory. Judging by the layers of dust (according to _The Science of Deduction_ ), it had lain undisturbed beneath this bench for around two years, and judging by its size, thickness and breaking pattern, it had been part of a much larger piece, like a pane.

Like a window.

**~x~**


	4. Paranoid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean everyone isn't out to get you.

The following five days find Philip Anderson existing within a constant, oppressive bubble of paranoia and foreboding. He avoids Greg, the pub, Baker Street, Bart's, everyone. Easier for him than most, but to disappear in London wasn't as easy as it sounded. Looking over his shoulder at every junction when necessity forced him out of the bedsit, paying with cash, only using a pay as you go phone (who, after all, would he be calling?) and regarding every CCTV camera on every lamp-post as a potential enemy _("you're not bloody James Bond!" - Sally_ ) was becoming increasingly necessary. Had he any actual 'proof'? Well, nothing tangible, but it was like the madman being the last to know he was actually mad; he _wasn't_ going to be the last to know. How many long, black luxury cars drove around London? Many, he supposed, it was that kind of city, but in this area? Run down bedsits, takeaways and spray tan shops everywhere, filthy graffiti, lampposts decoupaged by layers of flyers ( _'want to earn 50K a year?' 'Comedy Hypnotist - seeing is believing!'_ ). Darkened windows (like the ones in Baker Street) always gave him him the heebie-jeebies at the best of times, but there had been one too many black cars driving too slowly and incongruously in his vicinity.

Then there were the window cleaners. He assumed the owner of his building to be well past caring for the upkeep of its fixtures and fittings, but the window swing, complete with pulley system and two burly looking men (their bulk down to too many pasties or secreted firearms?) had been attached to the side of his block of flats for three days. The windows were numerous and pretty filthy, but still. That afternoon he was shuffling back from the corner shop with his pint of semi-skimmed, checking behind in parked car wing mirrors as he passed them (too much James Bond, or too much Sherlock Holmes? Hard to tell) when a friendly yell from above made his heart yammer and his eyes wrench skywards. One of the window cleaners was waving to his colleague and signalling to his belt, motioning a clipping movement with his hand. The man had obviously forgotten to clip his safety harness to the carabiner of his lifeline and saluted his thanks, but Anderson was transfixed and immediately transported:

_Glass shattering around a dark, wild-haired form, a man. Shoes landing, long pale fingers reaching back and unclipping a carabiner, letting the safety rope release behind him, back into the tumultuous cascade of breaking glass. He was landing hard, releasing his bonds, watched (shocked smile, dimples, parted lips, sharp intake of breath) by another._

The image was so strong it enveloped his entire consciousness until a hand touched his shoulder and brought him back.

"You awake then?" Unshaven, heavily layered Big Issue seller breathing gruffness and _White Lightning_ into his face, but he's grateful.

"Thanks," says Anderson. "I was… miles away."

"You wanna be careful mate, there's plenty pickpockets round here who'd have yer cash quick as 3 - 2 - 1." He clicks grimy fingers in front of Anderson's face.

"Yes… thanks again."

He sleeps uninterrupted that night, for the first time in ages.

**~x~**

By the weekend, he is calmer, more rested and beginning to see how his recent… investigations might be looking to those around him. He is a little embarrassed and considers texting Greg for a meet up to maybe offer something in the way of apology. Things were so muddled now, less clear cut. He had obviously had some kind of guilt-induced breakdown and was actually trying to resurrect a dead man in order to make the part he played in it less shocking; easier to bear. He stops reading Sherlock's Blog and deletes all notes pertaining to deduction and its science. He throws away the piece of broken glass he'd taken from the lab and cancels that week's meeting of _The Empty Hearse._ Membership was drifting, truth be told and if he could have afforded a therapist, she would probably have told him such things were 'unhealthy'. God, he might even shave off that bloody beard.

In fact, everything seemed going swimmingly until he cut across Marylebone Park one morning to visit the Jobcentre and saw John Watson.

He was alone on a park bench, hands crossed listless and empty between his knees, not noticing the world around him, but lost in his own thoughts. Anderson knows he will not engage John Watson, particularly now. His cheeks glow with shame in the presence of real grief, and what his crack-brained theories would have done to this man. How relieved he is then, when a red-coated, bright-haired perky looking woman rushes up to greet Watson, proffering some kind of apology for lateness and generating smiles, embraces and an almost unrecognisable change in the man who'd lost his best friend. They leave the park bench, holding hands, no doubt enjoying what spring in the city had to offer at the weekend. They looked happy, and Philip felt a pang, a deep sadness mixed with with genuine joy for their happiness. John had moved on, so should he.

Thus, everything really was going swimmingly and it appeared that Sherlock Holmes was finally going to be allowed to rest in peace.

That was, until the final nightmare.

**~x~**

It was as if days of calm and peace had led to his amygdala into a fit of spiteful rage, laying waste to his subconscious in a massive, technicolor aggregation of insanity. The moment Philip Anderson closed his eyes that night, the show began and the detail was outstanding.

 _A wire at the window, a white-coated woman in fearful apprehension, eyes brown, hair swinging as she whips her head towards the implosion before her. Arms crossed body, legs, sending splinters of glass across the room. He unclips himself (dark coat, heavily woven, sweeping around his feet as they land, one… two…) the rope flies back, he shakes dark, bouncing curls, freeing any glass, flicks up that collar with such familiar arrogance, assurance, utter enjoyment, and then seconds before he touches her, they stare at each other, and they_ know _. Closer, pale hands folded either side of her head, intent in his eyes, glittering in the dimness of the lab. Closer. He looks at her, really looks, the hands are close, but it is his eyes that pull her to him; trust, acceptance, gratitude. He unfolds long fingers, gentle but powerful, potent, desirous. Their silhouettes, outlined at that broken window (he can almost feel the breeze blowing through, ruffling his hair, papers on her desk) melding as he takes her face and draws her in, fingers cradling her head, holding her mouth to his, kissing her, devouring her, white against black, deepening and merging together. He tilts her body to his and she is leaning into him, only touching at the point of that kiss, where energy sparks, fizzles and crackles around their heads, until her hands (knowing it is not enough) reach up to take his face, caress his exposed neck, as if to take his pulse and pull him closer. Then, a simultaneous release of hands, and they take a defiant, final glance (trust, acceptance, gratitude, incredulity, adoration?) before he turns, face in shadow and leaves, without goodbye._

Because it isn't goodbye, is it?

**~x~**


	5. Je reviens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, being correct isn't quite as satisfying as it should be.

He is panting as he turns into Giltspur Street, sweat running down unchecked beneath his shirt. He should have left the jumper on the bedroom floor along with everything else. Thanks to the Intranet (password survived the cull, thank God) he knows she's on duty. He passes billboards along the bottom of the ambulance station ( _'Seeing is Believing - Derren Brown at the Adelphi, this week only_ ') and he knows he's been a bloody fool. Not for believing, but for doubting, for forgetting.

Round past the ambulance station, past those horrific cracks on the pavement he couldn't previously see without retching, not stopping as he enters reception, flashing a decommissioned badge and being grateful a full on cardiac incident was distracting all on duty. Up stairs rather than risk the lifts (paranoia apparently back and bringing a few friends along for the ride), turning a corner and colliding straight into a small, white-coated woman with a tray of slides she miraculously manages to hold onto. Bizarrely, she does not look altogether shocked to see his bedraggled, gasping, crazy-eyed self and gestures towards her lab door.

"I imagine you have a few questions," she says, following him.

**~x~**

She's given him a glass of water and his heart-rate chance to recover. He must look like hell, but it's familiar territory and he gulps down the drink, keeping eye contact with Molly Hooper, doctor of corpses and haunter of dreams.

"Not so much ' _Suicide of Fake Genius_ ', more ' _Genius of Fake Suicide_ ', I think," he says.

She nods. "I know you do."

He is angry; he wags his finger at her.

"No - I know _you_ do! You've had me for an idiot. He's alive. Sherlock Holmes is alive!"

She is calm.

"From your investigations?"

He leans forward, eyes wide, pointing at them, jabbing in their direction.

"NO! From my own eyes, because _I. Saw. It."_

There is a silence, punctuated only by that dripping tap and the muffled murmur of the traffic below.

"I was in this lab, and I wasn't supposed to be. I saw how Sherlock jumped off that roof - bungee rope, smashing through this here window (which I know has been replaced) and sent on his merry way - by you!"

She just looks and he can see no crack in her armour, only hear the slight buzz of a mobile in her pocket.

"I've been going insane, imagining it was all in my head, but I know he's coming back and I know you helped him leave. God!" He buries his sweating face in his hands, beard still present and still irritating. "God, you even kissed him goodbye!"

When they'd realised they'd had witnesses, he'd been given some kind of mind swipe, hypnosis ( _seeing is believing_ ), he knew that now.

"I was supposed to forget everything, but bits kept on seeping through, triggered by events in the real world. It just kept coming back…" He looks up at her and she looks genuinely distressed, sorry. She was good at empathy, but he'd seen her kiss Sherlock Holmes, he'd seen Sherlock Holmes kiss her, and it hadn't been a peck fit for a maiden aunt. It suddenly dawned.

"He's in love with you, isn't he? _He_ _loves you_. He's coming back, to _you_!"

And he knew it would be soon ( _black cars, window cleaners, Tibet, India, Germany…)_ and Sherlock Holmes would be back in London.

Molly Hooper is standing now, and she subconsciously touches the buzzing phone in her pocket (third time in five minutes) shaking her head, and he knows she isn't going to tell him. Anything.

"I'm sorry," she says, "but you mustn't worry. Things often have a way of working themselves out. You can't always control what happens in life; often it is what it is."

They are both walking to the door and he does feel some kind of catharsis, some acceptance for telling someone what he believes, and for them not to dismiss it out of hand.

He pauses at the door, turning to see her silhouetted against that window, just as in those resurgent memories fighting so hard to revisit his brain.

"Yes Molly, " he says, feeling a change in the air, a further courage to his convictions. "But sometimes it isn't."

Molly Hooper watches him go, herself harbouring a wriggling little jumble of emotions all fighting for dominance. The phone in her pocket buzzes for the fourth time and is this time opened. Molly cannot repress the smile that hovers about her lips, and she touches them, as if reliving something while reading them.

She hurriedly types a response, but is interrupted by a sharp ring tone before she has the chance to press _send._

Holding the phone to her ear with both hands, Molly Hooper cannot prevent a slow, beautiful smile spreading across her face and lighting up her soft brown eyes from the inside out.

 _"Darling_ ," she says, the weight of the world lifting from her shoulders with the freshest huff of Serbian air.

**~x~**

**EPILOGUE:**

"If you pulled that off, I'm the last person you'd tell the truth to!"

Sherlock Holmes contemplates the man opposite. The two years since he last saw Philip Anderson (in person) had been less than kind, and so he endeavours to be.

"Anderson, you wanted the truth - "

"I _know_ the truth, but I'm still waiting to hear it from _you_!"

Sherlock crosses his long legs, then recrosses them as he sits uncomfortably along Anderson's faded sofa (a homage to the ineffectualness of stain removers) and sighs. If people insist on being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it stood to reason that some type of inconvenience to themselves would be appropriate. Had he himself not been rather inconvenienced by Mr Moriarty and his desire for chaos and corruption? Philip Anderson, in a pique of self-justification, had been snooping around Molly's lab for more damning evidence of fakery and look where it had got him. The man appeared to be continuing in his diatribe, but Sherlock must let him, since he'd made a promise to someone about it.

"Don't bother with the crash mat/body double/face mask nonsense! There's no way any sane person would believe that mish-mash of action film cliches."

"Indeed?"

"Oh yes, indeed. I saw you - you and Molly Hooper. She saved you, got you out. You got me hypnotised (waste of time, I'm obviously not that suggestible) but I saw you smash through that window; I saw you snog the face off her!"

"That doesn't sound like me."

Anderson falters, but only for a second.

"No, no, it doesn't, but there's the genius of the thing - as well as hiding the truth, you just didn't want people to know that you… cared for someone."

"Never an advantage."

"Bollocks."

Sherlock raises a brow, one finger resting against his cheek.

"It's a theory, but holds less water than the one I've told you." Sherlock stands; there is nothing more he can say. He's done all he promised, but Anderson seems to panic in seeing him stride towards the door.

"I remember every detail," he says, wistfully, staring at the man he always knew would come back one day.

"Only lies have detail," murmurs Sherlock Holmes as he departs. "The truth is usually much more simple."

And he smiles to himself as he rattles down the stair well, because the truth was really something rather lovely he'd prefer not to share.

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who read, followed and commented on this indulgent little slice of whimsy. I love differing points of view, and I love the crazy that is Anderson, so it was a win/win for me.
> 
> I realise the haziness of reasons for Anderson's presence in the lab that day, but perhaps that story is for another day.
> 
> Until then,
> 
> E. x


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